Hamilton Jazz Society 30 May 2010
“What a blast” – we have just come back from an enjoyable evening, playing to a large, appreciative audience at the Hamilton Jazz Society, Te Rapa Racecourse.
The evening was opened by the local Hamilton Big Band - Gentle Jazz, playing some well rehearsed numbers ranging from Glen Millar to Beatles to Average White band. Great music guys!
Then it was our turn on stage. We had prepared a selection of our covers and original songs for the jazz club – starting off with Dave‘s original instrumental “Clock in / Clock out”. It was great to have the audience joining in, providing some “backing vocals” to some of the well known songs – “Sentimental Journey”, “Cry me a River” and “Close to You”, and they did it without any charts or words.
One of the highlights of the evening was Kim‘s rendition of “Over the Rainbow”, again supported by the impromptu (and un-rehearsed) backing vocals from the crowd. Next time we‘ll have to get them all up on stage with us.
For the start of our last set we were joined by three members of the Hamilton band Georgian Jazz Gentlemen – Pete Fuller (Band leader - sax), Ivan Stevens (Guitar), and Bryan ‘ Hawkeye‘ Hawkins (drums), playing a couple of well known standards “Watermelon Man” and “Route 66”.
Gavin felt very much ’at home‘ playing back in familiar surroundings and with some of the band members of Georgian Jazz, who he used to play with. It had been just over 25 years since Gavin had help start up the Hamilton Jazz Society and it is great to see the society still going strong after all these years.
Thank you, Hamilton Jazz Society, for the invitation and special thanks to the sound technicians who set-up and balanced up our sound for us.
We had a great time!
